So this has been on my mind for a while. Different recipes are influenced by Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship, or at least that is what I recall, and from some limited testing back in the day that I did. If I am way off base please say so, so I can slap myself, drink another Red Bull, and wake up cause it's late here.

The reason I bring this up mainly is because I write guides. Now, I haven't concerned myself too much so far with going so in depth with a guide that I test each skill up recipe with a full set of craftsmanship/magic craftsmanship gear each time I change recipes. (I probably should have, but hind sight is 20/20...)

What exactly would you believe to be the best way of going about categorizing recipes by what influences them the most?

Personally, I would think that since a recipe can be attempted 10 levels below the actual recipe, that any testing should probably be done as soon as you can attempt a recipe to ensure the greatest base difficulty. In addition, I also feel that any testing done should be done only if the person has the required training and support (if possible to do so). I also think that no abilities should be used, and only 'Weathered' tools should be used, to make the impact of gear more significant.

As far as to my theory as to how to determine whether or not a recipe is primarily Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship, let us use some simple logic and take a couple of Alchemy recipes to use as an example:

Sunset Wheat Flour is made from Sunset Wheat. Now in real life we all know that flour is made by processing the wheat through a mill. By using this knowledge it would be logical to assume that using the Secondary Tool of an Alchemist (Mortar) would make more sense, since you are grinding the ingredients, where as an Alembic is used to distill ingredients. (This also ties into my theory that a recipe will have a lower base difficulty depending on which tool you choose to use as well.)

Now if we look at stats of Mortars we can see a trend showing that Mortars have a naturally higher Magic Craftsmanship. By transitive property of equality (where if a = b and b = c, then a = c must be true) that would make us believe that when making Sunset Wheat Flour and are going for the highest probable chance of success we would want to use our Secondary Tool, and equip gear offering as much Magic Craftsmanship as we can get.

Following this line of thought lets examine the results of making Sunset Wheat Flour with a Mortar. If you HQ while using a Mortar you will produce a greater quantity. If you use an Alembic, however, you get a greater quality.

So if every hypothesis is correct so far, then perhaps we can identify a recipes main influence of either Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship, by examining the results of using a Primary or Secondary Tool, and then comparing the main governing stat on that type of Tool, and then using that information to categorize a recipe by Craftsmanship/Magic Craftsmanship.

So let us pick a recipe at random. Well not very random but I will try to get something that you can't really reference to real life as easily:

Rubber Band is made from Rubber. If we look at the results obtained from each tool, we see that our Primary Tool will give us greater quantity, while our Secondary Tool will give us greater quality. Based on the above hypothesis that would mean that the Tool to use for this recipe to ensure greater success rate would be our Alembic. Since Alembics have a naturally higher Craftsmanship then Mortars then, again from the above hypothesis we would assume that Craftsmanship gear would also ensure greater success.

TL:DR Based on whether or not a Tool provides quantity or quality, we can determine which tool will provide higher base success rate, as well as determine whether or not Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship will influence success rate more.

Let me know what you think.

I would like to finalize an easy way to determine what to wear and which tool to use for highest possible success rate on each recipe for obvious reasons. Updating the database here on ZAM with information such as this can greatly benefit a lot of people, especially if they are preparing to synth a particular recipe a few hundred times in a row.

I remember looking into this a bit at launch but I didn't go the "real life" route.

My untested, untried suposition was that since the majority of main tools (which I looked at the time) had a lot more craft than mag craft those recepies whichresulted in HQ from Main Tool would require Craft while those which provided HQ from Off Tool would require Mag Craft.

What about recipes which produce crystals and shards, and those that produce finished gear? There is only one type of HQ result for these sets so both tools should produce the same HQ results. Can we assume that all crystal/shard producing recipes follow the same stat? For gear, is there a different stat for heavy/light/woven armor synths?

I don't know about easy, but I think the testing will be quite lengthy (unless we get SE to come out and give us categories).

What about recipes which produce crystals and shards, and those that produce finished gear? There is only one type of HQ result for these sets so both tools should produce the same HQ results. Can we assume that all crystal/shard producing recipes follow the same stat? For gear, is there a different stat for heavy/light/woven armor synths?

I don't know about easy, but I think the testing will be quite lengthy (unless we get SE to come out and give us categories).

Edited, Sep 16th 2011 5:57am by LemmingKingXXX

I knew someone would mention this. The recipes in which the result based on Tool is not as clear cut as quantity over quality, would require testing. (Unfortunately.)

I was thinking about this... but considering what Alchemist said, I would think that for gear it maybe influenced by whether or not the armor is considered to be a DoM or DoW piece. Though gear for crafters would then have a same issue, but I'd then again think GoL would fall under main hand, and crafter gear would be under off hand (possibly)?

I mean these are all assumptions, but the nagging truth is we won't know unless people spend a load of time and gil finding out for sure.

Q. What do the crafter-related attributes Craftsmanship, Magic Craftsmanhip, and Control each do?A. Among recipes in the game, there are those for which the rate of progress and chance of success are increased by higher Craftsmanship, and those for which they are determined by Magic Craftsmanship.

Lodestone wrote:

Control helps to reduce the occurrence of aetherial sparking (see below), and exerts its influence over both types of recipes just mentioned.

Lodestone wrote:

All recipes, however, have set attribute requirements. Attempting a recipe with attributes below those required will result in lessened progress and quality, even for successful actions.

I'm not sure what this all means. I might be mis-interpreting when I read the part about Control having an effect on both type of recipes. Do they mean control has an effect solely because it helps against sparking / elemental destabilization or because it also influneces success rate on synths?

When they mention set attribute requirements and getting lesser progress and quality, I, at first, thought that meant a specific amount of Crafting/Mag.Crafting/Control, but re-reading it, I'm pretty sure it means a certain amount of INT, STR, DEX, etc.

Is it only limited to the main attributes of the hand/craft, or is it possible an alchemist recipe works better with high STR?

My experiences so far with many crafts is that I used to be fairly good at weaving, but after a few stat reassignemnet these last few weeks, I am having a lot more trouble. I also upgraded my crafting gear, so that might also be at fault.

It's just so difficult to narrow down the problem when there's so many variables (and also a lot of good ol' Random)

Going off of what lemming said, then since you lowered dex and probably pie your weaving likely took a hit.

Consider the real world application that someone with dexterous hands/fingers is able to be more nimble and accurate, a skill that is essentially in threading/needling.

I mean this is only my 6th day playing the game, but I've been reading much theory about crafting in ffxiv, as I crafted in Aion and FFXI in the past. I have just been holding off because I want to be a culinarian so as I level i'm saving all ingredients. I do believe a combination of what alchemist and lemming have said is true. My reasoning is that if the original DEV team wanted crafting to be like a normal job (DoW) then attributes would surely have an effect on crafting. Which it maybe safe to conclude that magic based tools will be of better use to those who have high magical based stats and those who have melee stats would be better at the other. Which would add another degree of complication if you wanted a very high HQ chance on a recipe that is best suited for a physical class but you have high magic stats. This however I assume will be fixed once physical levels are gone.

So if I were a crafter and could pump out some nice hq(s) currently I would do it before they get rid of physical levels because it may very well drop your current HQ rate.

Perhaps it will help if someone wants to do further testing. The theory here is that MH is mostly influenced by craft, and OH by mag. craft based on stats found on tools as well as the recipe recommendation.

Edited, Sep 17th 2011 11:57am by Dallie

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